Connecting and engaging with your social communities of interest can be a challenge. But it doesn’t have to be with the BurrellesLuce Social Media Monitoring software solution*. Whether you are an existing Engage121 user or looking to leverage a social media monitoring tool for the first time, you’ll learn to use all the features and benefits of Engage121 and more effectively take control of your social media efforts.

Join Tressa Robbins, vice president of Media Outreach and Social Media Solutions at BurrellesLuce and Jack Monson, vice president at Engage121, for this instructional product demonstration, “Social Media Management with BurrellesLuce WorkFlow.”

To gain the clearest understanding of how your messages are influencing all of your audiences, you need to see all of your content from all media types. Otherwise, you won’t have an accurate representation and risk skewing your data and results.

These were just some of the questions addressed at a panel on “Developing a Winning Content Strategy to Engage Your Followers” at this year’s PR News Facebook Conference.

Stephanie Agresta, executive vice president and managing director of social media at Weber Shandwick, talked about the importance of assigning roles when it comes to the structure of community management. She highlighted four responsibilities that PR professionals need to consider when developing the structure of their community management team: community manager, trend expert, monitoring expert, and reporting expert.

When it comes to building a successful community, the personality of the community manager is key. It is their job to ensure that the consumer is getting value from the brand, as well as to oversee the reporting and monitoring teams. To be a good community manager, you need to: listen, be authentic and transparent, blog, and develop a social media presence. Maria Baugh, co-owner of Butter Lane Cupcakes, also affirmed that it is very important for the community manager to know your brand.

Some other takeaways for developing a winning content strategy on Facebook:

From Stephanie Agresta

As your community grows so should the frequency of your posts

Don’t hide behind your logo. Be real.

Measure.

Don’t forget about in real life – offer your community opportunity to come together outside of Facebook.

From Maria Baugh

Talk about your product with groups that seek you out and choose to engage with you.

Use Facebook to get instant feedback from and dialogue with customers. Again insights into what’s really taking place and what people want to see.

Be consistent in your messaging.

Build an authentic brand by being real – person to person – and avoid marketing speak.

Use all available tools, including photos, videos, polls, and promotions.

In this way, the function of the community manager and building a Facebook community is similar to that of public relations practitioner. Securing media placements is not unlike securing tweets, blog posts, and Facebook posts. Ensure the target audience – regardless of the outlet – receives something of value and feels connected to your brand or client.

Got more tips for effectively using Facebook and creating quality content? Share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

Interestingly, 69 percent of reporters said they use Twitter as a reporting/sourcing tool (this is a 21 percent increase from 2010) with 49 percent saying they have their own Twitter account. But only one percent indicated they’d like to be contacted via Twitter. The disconnect here is interesting to me and I have to wonder why, if they are using Twitter for research, they wouldn’t want to be contacted via the platform. Perhaps they want to listen (aka lurk) and not actually engage – despite the 37 percent who said they use social networking sites to participate in conversations (27 percent specified Twitter). Hmm… that’s a head-scratcher.

Other notable findings:

92 percent believe journalists’ reliance on social media is increasing.

78 percent say they use company websites as a tool in reporting.

75 percent indicated they use Facebook, with only 10 percent using MySpace. (No surprise there.)

77 percent believe new media and communications tools/technologies are enhancing journalism; 14 percent think social media and citizen journalism will ultimately lead to the demise of the profession. (My guess is these will be the ones looking for a new job soon.)

Key takeaways for public relations / media relations professionals is that 53 percent of journalists surveyed indicated they prefer to be contacted via email, and 34 percent prefer phone.

Even as social media continues to change the media landscape, PR Daily surmised journalists still prefer more traditional methods of communication.

Jen McClure, president of the Society for New Communications Research, stated: “Social media tools and technologies are being used by journalists to monitor issues, stories and content even after a story has been published. The publication of the story is no longer the end result. Today, media organizations and journalists also must serve as curators of content, are looked to to drive conversations and expected to provide information to keep the conversation going even after the story has been published.”

Do you agree with these findings? Look forward to your thoughts and comments on the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas blog.

Last week, in the midst of all the flooding here in southeast Missouri, I was fortunate enough to be able to get away to the desert for a few days and attend the PRSA Western District Conference. One of the sessions gave us an inside look into some of Las Vegas’ newsrooms through its panel: Emily Neilson, president/GM for 8 News NOW, Ken Ritter, staff writer for the Associated Press, and Bruce Spotleson, group publisher for Greenspun Media Group.

It wasn’t surprising to hear Spotleson state that journalists are multi-tasking these days, often reporting, blogging, producing video/audio, interacting on social media, and more. Ritter stated, in the AP newsroom, he’s also doing “news triage” – which results in his attention span being 30 seconds or 140 characters. One point he made, that every public relations person should heed, was, “If you receive a call from us, pay attention! This probably means the story is ready to go out on the wire and we need comment/confirmation – but it’s going with or without you!”

Neilson talked about online and mobile being the “wild wild west” of reporting and how “i-reporters” have iPhone video posted before a traditional journalist can even get to the scene. So, it’s increasingly important for journalists to not only report news, but engage the public and rely on them more and more.

Neilson made a point of saying they [8 News Now] are NOT a “TV station” anymore but rather they are a local news organization that is platform agnostic.

She explains, that The Media must report the way consumers want, which entails speed, speed, speed, and then get depth of story out. Giving up control and unbundling of news services is, in her opinion, the most critical issue facing journalism right now. The value of eyeballs is very different now than ever before – they’re trading analog dollars for digital dimes.

When asked what piece of advice she could give those of us in PR and media relations, she offered: “Do NOT write press releases for your client, instead write it for your neighbor – what would they want to know?”

I hadn’t quite heard it put that way before and think that’s great advice. Do you agree? What would you add? Please leave a comment below on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.